25 years ago, Star Trek decided to go where the franchise had not gone before with Deep Space Nine. Variety has a piece looking back at its creation and evolution… and has some pictures of the cast and crew at this part of this linear existence. Some of you have already clicked on the link above. You know who you are.
They say all good things come to an end. In the case of podcasts and online video series, I suppose you don’t know how good a thing is until it’s gone. So it was with some sadness that I took the time to read the postmortem by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou explaining how their YouTube series, Every Frame a Painting had come to an end. A friend and fellow fan of the series sent the essay to me and…
There will be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning. And by “toast” I mean theater-related joy. And by “the neighborhood,” I mean “American theater.” And by “this morning,” I mean… well, I don’t know how long, but it’ll be longer than a morning. Actor, playwright, and director Sam Shepard has died at the age of 73. I first learned about it in a piece in Broadway World, which is worth checking…
I would be remiss in my duty to the Prime Directive of the Internet –that being to forward all time-sucking memes, videos, and articles t0 everyone I can– if I were not to make sure you knew about Bill Wurtz‘ latest project: a 20-minute entertainingly off-the-wall history of the entire world. Be warned: the narrator is irreverent to all peoples, religions, and himself. He also tends to swear.
It’s time, once again, for my biennial 50 Favorite Films. Okay, granted I’ve been doing it offline intermittently for about 30 years, but for comparison, you can also see my 2012 list and 2014 list. You can also read about how I rank the films via a pairwise comparison sort based on the criteria of quality, watchability, and personal resonance. There were significant changes this year, something that convinces me this is a fun exercise…
Every two years, I do a sort to come up with my 50 favorite films. You can see the 2012 version here, and the 2016 version will go up tomorrow. The actual pool of films I rank usually numbers in the hundreds. That’s because I’ve found that some films will dramatically change in ranking. For that reason –and the amount of time needed to do the rankings and write them all down– I only do the ranking every two…
Earlier this week, I mentioned I spent last weekend sorting out my favorite films, circa 2016. Well, yes. And love ya, Dame Julie, but that film didn’t make the 2012 list. Part of the fun of doing this biennial sort is to compare my current favorites to years past and see what has changed. For that reason, I’m sharing both the previous sorts I did using my current sorting method of pairwise comparison. As with…
This past weekend I had some free time. What do project managers do with free time? Make lists! Specifically, I decided it was time once again for my biennial Favorite Films sort. (you can find posts about the favorite film here). Creating a list of favorite films has been something I’ve been doing since at least the late 80s, but my current method is something I’ve been doing since 2012 and have found easy –and not…
This past weekend, while I was dealing with schoolkids and stormtroopers at Escape Velocity, Garrison Keillor hosted his last episode of A Prairie Home Companion, as described here and here (and countless other places on the web). As mentioned in Chris Barton’s piece for the LA Times, the approach on one hand was that of simply another show. But so many of us would like that option for yet another show. After 40 years, you…
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being a “talking head” on television talking about Hollywood, celebrity culture, and the 2016 Presidential Race. One of the things I referenced was Daniel Boortsin’s 1962 book The Image, which when I first read it 20-some years ago, seemed very prescient. Nowadays, it seems only more so. What I was referring to on the program was Boorstin’s observation of the new class of celebrity who was “a person who…